KDE4 is resource hungry on older hardware - alternatives?

[toad]

I found that especially on older hardware KDE4, or plasma to be more precise, simply requires too many resources. This leaves the user frustrated and thinking "what a load of ball".

Gnome may be inherently ugly to the KDE trained eye but if you want to spend an hour or two tweaking it you can make it look and behave whichever way you like. It is obviously easier on resources and therefore runs quite well on older machines. BUT you have to turn its guts inside out to make it look nice and behave acceptably.

Then there is XFCE of Xubuntu fame, a lightweight desktop manager which, for my taste, is too close to gnome.

Then I recently stumbled across LXDE which doesn't have the pitfalls of Fluxbox but matches its lightning speed. It is based on openbox and does pretty much everything the average user needs.

I've been using LXDE without complaints on my laptop for a week now, would be interested to hear about other experiences, hints, recommendations.

Cheers.

[dibl]

Re: KDE4 is resource hungry on older hardware - alternatives?

And of course, the ever-enigmatic Enlightenment desktop:

http://www.elivecd.org/

[toad]

Re: KDE4 is resource hungry on older hardware - alternatives?

I never did manage to get my head round enlightenment. I installed it and got things like E(KDE) or E(Gnome) or some such in my KDM. I couldn't make head or tail of it

Perhaps I'll install it on my laptop and take it to the LUG tomorrow so some poor soul can take me aside and enlighten me...

And re KDE4 - KDE4.2 on Arch is actually flying on my T41 with its 1.6 processor and 32mb graphics card while on Kubuntu it was sluggish. I don't want to blame Kubunt though - about two weeks have passed in the meantime and KDE has taken enormous strides since, so that may have something to do with it, too.

[dibl]

Re: KDE4 is resource hungry on older hardware - alternatives?

I think KDE 4 on Kubuntu has some "maturization" to go through -- usually tuning for optimal performance comes late in the software development cycle.

I recently installed the latest elive development release on a USB stick, and it seems to work pretty well, from my limited experimentation on it. It has some Gnome-ish features and packages (Synaptic is default), and other things that are fairly unique. But the DE seems pretty fast and light -- probably it's a decent choice for folks with older hardware and not a lot of RAM.

[Primoz]

Re: KDE4 is resource hungry on older hardware - alternatives?

I somehow found this thread, and decided to try LXDE as I heard some good things about it and the screenshots gave an impression of KDE3 similar DE. And I must say it's lightning fast! It's really much faster than KDE.
I'll definitely stay on KDE, but always hope that someday my KDE gets as fast as LXDE. And another plus is that's less intrusive than Gnome, and picks KDE apps nicely. First time I logged on it and my Kopete starts (I thought that I'll have to specify or run it manually).

All in all experience really cool, but no KDE4.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: KDE4 is resource hungry on older hardware - alternatives?

...I've been using LXDE without complaints on my laptop for a week now, would be interested to hear about other experiences, hints, recommendations...

Which distro?

[toad]

Re: KDE4 is resource hungry on older hardware - alternatives?

Which distro?

That was on Sidux. Now I'm back on KDE4.2 again with all its bling.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: KDE4 is resource hungry on older hardware - alternatives?

I see now that LXDE is default for knoppix...
http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=knoppix

[Monster_user]

Re: KDE4 is resource hungry on older hardware - alternatives?

Cool, that was one of my biggest complaints about Knoppix.

If not LXDE, then KDE 3.5.x is very effecient, and stable. Somebody needs to make newer packages available for it. such as for the LTS versions. So that it will work better on older hardware.

[flarson]

Re: KDE4 is resource hungry on older hardware - alternatives?

I am really surprised you guys think KDE4 is resource hungry, at least compared to KDE3.5 or Gnome. My experience (with JJ) has been that it is remarkably efficient. I was so struck by that that I dug out a Pentium 450 with a 32 MB TNT2 just to install it and see how it worked. It did work. I certainly could not use it now, but at the time that computer was new it would have been usable. Of course if you skip all the resource eating convenience of the Desktops you can use something like Ice or even FVWM.

[claydoh]

Re: KDE4 is resource hungry on older hardware - alternatives?

I agree, as my 5 year old laptop (P4-M,2.0ghz, 1gb ram) is rather snappy in Jaunty, due in good part to the addition of QT4.5. the 32 mb ati mobility video even does kwin effects rather well, too (using the open source driver). I did have to try some simple xorg.conf tweaks, though, that I found in the Ubuntu wiki. If I am doing a lot of work on the laptop, I sometimes have to temporarily disable desktop effects.

I think video drivers are the stumbling point, but the newest nvidia and ati closed drivers seem to be coming along now.

[toad]

Re: KDE4 is resource hungry on older hardware - alternatives?

If I watch football in the browser the cpu goes up to something like 70 degrees Celsius. That is hot! That is with all the bling turned on.

[toad@archtop toad]$ kde4-config --version
Qt: 4.5.0
KDE: 4.2.2 (KDE 4.2.2)
kde4-config: 1.0

I haven't checked against gnome, xfce or lxde to compare though.

My T41 used to run at just under 40 degrees with kde3 - now with effects it rarely drops below 50. Thing is, I like the effects so much that I don't care

[lmilano]

Re: KDE4 is resource hungry on older hardware - alternatives?

I always keep a second, light WM in case something goes wrong with KDe. So I happened to try LXDE the other day, and I thought WOW! Incredibly fast and responsive. Of course everything is responsive in my shiny new Phenom X3 over-clocked box. But it loaded about instantly, the menu was there, all the basics were there, looked good.

However, a few minutes later the panel became unresponsive, I think I hit some bug. Maybe related to 64 bit architecture. So I installed something else for a "plan B" WM. But I am planning to give it a new shot with Karmic.

[toad]

Re: KDE4 is resource hungry on older hardware - alternatives?

Haven't touched lxde for ages - the newer the kde, the better use of resources. I am down to high thirties, low forties now with bling. That is the same as the old KDE without bling, so I am one happy toad.

[lmilano]

Re: KDE4 is resource hungry on older hardware - alternatives?

That's right, for most existing hardware these days KDE is incredibly functional and fast enough. And that includes my old generation eeepc (701) running on a celery@600Mhz.

Incidentally, I "overclock" it to the stock 900Mhz so I can watch internet TV from the eeepc into my HDTV, but KDE is fully responsive @600Mhz with 512Mb Ram.

Of course if you have embedded linux, an MID, very _very_ old hardware Like Pentium III, that's a different story. Light WM's are incredibly useful for that. For anything else, full KDE/Gnome is best IMHO. I prefer KDE of course (otherwise I would be running Ubuntu, which receives a lot more resources and is therefore a lot more polished than Kubuntu). Of course, for each their own. That's the beauty of Software Libre.